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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Current and former inspectors general on Wednesday supported legislation aimed at strengthening the independence of IGs, while a top administration official defended the performance of an IG oversight group.

The measure (H.R. 928) introduced by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., would update the 1978 Inspector General Act and mirrors similar measures presented over the past five years. The latest version comes amid a wave of recent battles among inspectors general, agency heads and congressional overseers at NASA, the General Services Administration and the Commerce Department.

Under provisions designed to enhance independence from agency heads, the legislation would set renewable seven-year term limits for IGs and stipulate that they could only be removed from office for a list of offenses including malfeasance, neglect of duty and "inefficiency."

The measure would also codify an existing IG oversight group, the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency, into a statutorily chartered council and would allow it to submit independent budget requests to supplement those forwarded by agency heads. In addition, it would close a pay loophole under which career employee IGs often are capped at a pay grade below that of their top subordinates, by ensuring that IGs are considered at the level of agency senior staff members.

About the FedCFO Publisher

Since 1994, Doug Davidson has delivered Information Technology consulting to both public and private sector clients. He is a United States citizen and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) who's experience with federal administrative and financial management systems is in the areas of implementation, integration, operations and maintenance, federal accounting, reporting, budgeting, data extraction, data conversion, data transformation, and information synthesization.
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